China buries a deadly secret

Thousands of miners die in China each year. Why does it hardly rate a mention? By John Schauble.

The recovery alive this week of nine American coal miners trapped 73 metres underground in a Pennsylvania pit for three days is the best kind of news, worthy indeed of celebration.

Almost every minute of the ordeal at the Que Creek mine was covered live on television, the miners' plight beamed by satellite around the world.

Newspapers in the United States and abroad followed the rescue bid, its setbacks and eventual success in enormous detail. In an editorial, The Wall Street Journal lauded the bravery of the trapped miners and their rescuers, praising American ingenuity and God for being on side.

The recovery operation, as well as the cause of the accident and the emotional reunions of miners with their families, will be plumbed in detail over the days ahead.

But precisely at the same time as those men awaited rescue, yet another 18 Chinese coal miners died when a gas explosion ripped through their unlicensed mine in the southern province of Guizhou. How curious that their deaths _ a mere handful among the thousands each year in China _ rated barely a mention in the Chinese media, let alone in Australia, the US or elsewhere in the world.");document.write("

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Then again, perhaps not so curious. The two mine disasters simply demonstrated in microcosm how information flows around the globe these days. It also illustrates the difference between a society where information and news is disseminated so freely as to be at times embarrassingly intrusive, and another where no news is - for the Communist Party leadership at least - good news.

At the pit head in Pennsylvania a small army of journalists and camera crews assembled. Ironically enough, it was possible to watch the Que Creek coverage live in China via satellite television. Even the state-run Chinese media gave the drama ample coverage.

In China itself, however, the only television cameras allowed near a mine disaster are those of the official China Central Television or one of its agents. When pictures are broadcast they are a day or so old and grainy at best. Foreign reporters are kept well away from such calamities - for their own safety, of course.

It is simply another example of the Chinese Government's long-followed practice of keeping its people in the dark about most things. China is, after all, a country where straight-faced officials still hand out business cards with the words "Director, Propaganda Department" printed as their job description. On the positive side, the closely controlled Chinese Government media has been much more active in reporting mining accidents over recent months, a measure of the central government's alarm at the shoddy controls over mining operations and the huge annual death toll in the country's coal pits and other mines.

Officially, 3393 miners have already died in 2014 reported accidents in China during the first six months of this year. The official annual death toll is well over 5000 - but industry analysts suggest it may in fact be as many as twice that.

In one of the more heinous recent examples of an attempt to fudge the figures, a mine owner tried to conceal the bodies of 37 miners killed in an explosion in a gold mine in Shanxi in May. The owner claimed just two people had died, while hiding the bodies of the other victims nearby.

When disaster strikes in China, it is often terminal. The worst recent mine blast, in north-eastern Heilongjiang province, claimed the lives of 111 miners and four rescuers.

Few countries would tolerate the industrial accident rate that has become the norm in China. Mine deaths make up just 6 per cent of more than 100,000 workers killed on the job each year.

The government claims it is doing more than before. It has closed thousands of unsafe mines. But many reopen later, with private operators prepared to risk punishment or having paid off local officials to turn a blind eye. The State Administration on Work Safety has lately convened seminars on workplace safety, and maintains the situation is improving.

Just how bad the situation is remains a matter of guesswork. The miners, often itinerant workers from distant provinces, are largely anonymous. Their health, not to mention their lives, appear expendable to mine owners and operators whose attitude is akin to those of the 18th century British mine owners who sent children down pit to gouge the coal. Rescue teams are often spread far apart and poorly resourced. Their successes are few.

One is left wondering, in any case, whether for viewers and readers in the West the fate of a few thousand Chinese labourers cut off by language, culture and politics and entombed forever in this Stygian nightmare will ever have much resonance.

The joyful rescue of a handful of trapped Pennsylvanian miners seems much easier to comprehend.

John Schauble is China correspondent of The Age.
E-mail: jschauble@theage.com.au